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In a deal that has been in the work for weeks, Disney announced today that it would buy Playdom for $563.2 million, subject to certain conditions, as well as a performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million.

Playdom, the second-largest developer on Facebook, successfully transitioned over the last year from its home base on MySpace, and now pulls in a total of 42 million “estimated active players” per month, according to the press release — 39 million of those are on Facebook, according to our AppData service.

Chief executive John Pleasants, a veteran game executive, “wowed the Disney board with a presentation on social gaming at a recent company retreat,” according to The New York Times, and now he “is expected to work to develop new titles based on Disney characters and franchises.”

Pleasant’s presentation no doubt showed off the company’s big in-house hit this year, Social City, as well as Bola, a soccer game developed by Three Melons, a company it bought a few months ago. The two titles are the best results so far from the company’s build-and-buy strategy, which has included seven acquisitions so far in 2010 and numerous new games.

One of Playdom’s biggest rivals, Playfish, was bought by Electronic Arts last year in a deal worth up to $400 million, a watershed acquisition in social gaming that until today had been the largest purchase in the emerging industry. Playdom’s larger rival, Zynga, is valued up to more than $6 billion, we’ve heard from industry sources, it has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. It is on track to make $500 million this year, according to our Inside Virtual Goods report, although it’s possible that the company will make more, as some reports are indicating.